Heather O'Donnell, Piano

Biography

American pianist Heather O'Donnell has emerged as a distinctive and probing new voice on the music scene, presenting a repertoire that spans the 18th through the 21st-century with "masterful playing" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), "fine intelligence" (Philharmonic Magazine), and "fiery performances" (the Village Voice).

She has performed throughout Europe, America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Recent Festivals include MaerzMusik (Berlin), Festival Agora (Paris), Peterhof Festival (St. Petersburg), Indaba Festival (Grahamstown, South Africa), the Chopin Festival (New York), Eclat Festival (Stuttgart), and Tanglewood Festival (Massachussets). She gave solo recitals all over the world, for example in Amman, Kraków, Abu Dhabi, Paris, Beijing, Moscow, New York, and Berlin; she was a soloist with the St. Petersburg State Symphony, the Romanian State Philharmonic in Ploiesti, the DalSegno Chamber Orchestra, and the Harvard Orchestra.

Heather O'Donnell plays a wide range of music, from Bach's Goldberg Variations through major works of the early 20th-century (e.g. Charles Ives's- Concord Sonata, Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit), continuing on to a passionate involvement with contemporary music. She gave over 30 world-premieres of solo piano works (including pieces by Luciano Berio, Walter Zimmermann and James Tenney) and is the dedicatee of works by several composers (including Michael Finnissy, Frederic Rzewski, and Oliver Schneller). She was featured on Deutschland Radio, Radio France, and Deutsche Welle Television and gave lectures and masterclasses at Columbia University (New York), New England Conservatory (Boston), Universität der Künste (Berlin) and Rhodes University (South Africa). Heather O'Donnell was the first prize winner and the recipient of the Gaudeamus Foundation Prize in the Fifth Krzysztof Penderecki International Competition in Kraków, Poland. A Solo-CD in honor of Charles Ives will be released in August 2009 on Mode Records. She was the artistic director of many commissioning projects including "Responses to Ives" and "Piano optophonique". She was featured in German filmmaker Alexander Kluge's Film Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike.

Heather O'Donnell began studying piano at the age of five and was most influented by her teachers and mentors Charles Milgrim, Stephen Drury and Peter Serkin. She also worked closely with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Emanuel Ax, and Claude Helffer. Aside from her musical life, she is an avid reader and amateur painter, and took several courses in Philosophy and Literature at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University. From 2000-2002 she was the assistant of philosopher Paul Edwards at the New School for Social Research.

Heather O'Donnell is a Steinway Artist. She lives in Berlin with her husband, composer Oliver Schneller.